“Oh, no!” and the dark eyes were lifted to his in an almost comic protest; and they suddenly seemed to introduce herself to him. “I don’t wish to seem conceited, Mr. Marlay, but there are too many people waiting to see me home. I would have been safely in my bed an hour ago but that there were so many people to see me safely into it. But if you would rather not dance——?”
“But this is my first to-night!” he protested.
“Although, of course,” she mocked him, “you have had your offers?”
“I’ve had one, anyway,” he seriously agreed. “Lovely she was, and a famous dancer—but I thought, you know, that I would like to begin and end my night with a woman of quality.” That made her smile a little smile. Courteous cheek....
They danced on silently, softly. Their feet played tricks to the beat of the tireless measure, that exquisitely asinine blare which is England’s punishment for having lost America.... This is the nicest thing that’s happened to me for a very long time, Ivor thought, taking pleasure in her movement and her looks. Her hair is trying to look black, he thought, but it’s really dark blue, like her eyes.
It was thick hair, soft and thick and Latin, and it was coiled softly about her ears in loose dark masses: a dark setting for her white face, which wasn’t technically beautiful, like Lois Lamprey’s and Virginia’s, but had all the inner meaning of beauty. Her mouth was large and very mobile, a tentative and adventurous mouth.... And all the time he was conscious that she was abstracted, that she wasn’t thinking of him at all. And that was pleasant, he felt exceedingly at peace with her. So he didn’t press her to talk, he made no effort to amuse her; and that is the most intelligent thing that Ivor Marlay did that night.
As they danced past the large doorway he saw two men standing there, one dark and the other gray, talking. She had seen the direction of his eyes, for she said:—
“The distinguished-looking person with the iron-gray hair and the lovely corporation is my husband. But besides being my husband he is a great traveller. Not an explorer, mind you, but just a great traveller. He spends most of his time in travelling about extremely foreign countries, and the rest of his time he spends in feeling extremely foreign in his own.” Mrs. Gray had a delightful way, as she said things, of laughing without laughter, of being intimate without intimacy.
And the other one, Ivor thought, is “Rodney....”
The light voice went on: “And the other one, with the severe expression peculiar to celibate Englishmen of over forty, is Rodney West, the K.C., whom you’ll never really get to know unless you murder or get murdered by some one....”